Now It's Racism

First, the global warming demagogues tried to blame America for the disaster on the Gulf coast. Then the Islamists (who conveniently forget that their lives in the desert depend on trade with the Great Satan) gloated that Katrina was a terrorist.

Now, the Congressional Black Caucus (and others) are blaming racism for the plight of the poor and largely black hurricane victims still stranded in New Orleans.

The whole Fox News story is reproduced below, with my comments in italics.

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"It looks dysfunctional to me right now," said Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif.

She and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus, along with members of the Black Leadership Forum, National Conference of State Legislators, National Urban League and the NAACP, held a news conference and charged that the response was slow because those most affected are poor.

Setting aside the issue of what measures the government should take in an evacuation....

Call me crazy, but I thought the problem had something to do with an unprecedented flood of biblical proportions and a huge number of people in need of aid. The federal response left some things to be desired, but to conclude that it was a means of exterminating the poor is in lousy taste, to put it very charitably.

Many also are black, but the lawmakers held off on charging racism.

YET: See next sentence.

"The issue is not about race right now," [bold added] said Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio. "There will be another time to have issues about color."

I guess the race-baiting will happen later, after everyone forgets that the black mayor of New Orleans left an entire fleet of school buses (HT: Matt Drudge. See also Note 1.) to get flooded rather than using them in the evacuation. Or does doing nothing at all not count as "slow"? Or should Bush have personally told the mayor to do this? Somebody please throw me a bone here.

If the mayor of New Orleans is blameless for the above oversight, then so is Bush. If the mayor is to blame, then maybe we ought to consider other factors besides "racism" as an explanation.

President Bush, who visited storm-damaged areas Friday, acknowledged that the initial federal response was unacceptable and pledged to do more.

Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., said too much focus has been placed on the looting, taking away from what should be the priority: getting food, water and stability to the tens of thousands of displaced victims.

How the hell can one have "stability" without stopping the looters? Shooting a few looters early on is the only way to tell the rest of criminal element that law and order is in their best interests. Pay a couple of caps' worth of attention to looters sooner or you'll do nothing but pay attention to them later. The authorities in New Orleans, alas, chose the latter course of action.

And now that we've ignored the looters for so long, we have many more of them, including those who have looted guns and have moved on to bigger and better things, like terrorizing the rescuers and their fellow storm victims. Physicians are being threatened and shots are being fired at helicopters. Bus drivers at the Superdome fled after thinking the mobs were going to harm them.

You don't get "stability" by letting criminals do whatever the hell they want, Jesse. You can't have it both ways.

Also, see Note 2 to get an idea of the "depth" of Jackson's concern for his fellow black man.

Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, D-Mich., noted that the city of Detroit has offered housing, food and clothing for 500 families displaced by Katrina. She urged other cities to do the same.

Houston has already taken on more than 11,000 refugees from the Superdome as of today and is preparing to take more. I'm glad that Detroit can help, but a couple of words of gratitude towards Houston would have been nice. So what if it's in Bush's home state?

Watson and others also took issue with the word "refugee" being used to describe hurricane victims.

"'Refugee' calls up to mind people that come from different lands and have to be taken care of. These are American citizens," Watson said.

This is simply ridiculous.

No. "Refugee" calls to mind someone who has fled from a horrible disaster -- like a hurricane. I think we all know they're American citizens.

Sorry, but "refugee" isn't an insult and I'm not going to stop using it just because some multiculturalist wants to use it to pick a fight.

Added Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md.: "They are not refugees. I hate that word."

Yes. They are refugees. And I hate people trying to dictate to me how I am supposed to speak.

He called for citizens and governments to come together "with a force equal to that of Hurricane Katrina" to meet the needs of the hurricane victims.

While hot air -- like Katrina -- has been shown to have force, insults and word games have zero value at a time like this. Let's check the race-baiting and try doing something constructive instead.

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This is obscene. I suspect that thousands are going to die from this storm and its aftermath. Yes. The vast majority of the victims will be poor blacks, and this makes it no less tragic than had they all been white. But to use these deaths as a way of gaining political points on trumped-up charges of racism is positively ghoulish.

Aside from the CBC, it seems as if a coordinated media blitz (See also Note 3.) has begun for the Labor Day weekend. Jesse Jackson has kicked things off by, of all things, demanding that blacks be put in charge of the emergency response.

Jackson questioned why Bush has not named blacks to top positions in the federal response to the disaster, particularly when the majority of victims remaining stranded in New Orleans are black: "How can blacks be locked out of the leadership, and trapped in the suffering?"

First, Jackson should check the picture above and consider the story behind it. Second, he should apologize to white America for the implication of what he said: That whites are somehow inherently unable or unwilling to head up an effort to rescue blacks. This is beyond insulting: It's racist.

Once again, the left offers no new ideas. Its solution to everything seems to be to dream of the sixties, except for brief bouts of wakefulness during which we can hear shouts of "Bush lied, people died!"

How the hell does this help the storm victims, much less anyone else?

The Democrats, particularly the CBC, need some new ideas. A few could stand reading this to understand why I say that.

-- CAV

Note 1: Via Matt Drudge:

Louisiana disaster plan, pg 13, para 5 , dated 01/00

The primary means of hurricane evacuation will be personal vehicles. School and municipal buses, government-owned vehicles and vehicles provided by volunteer agencies may be used to provide transportation for individuals who lack transportation and require assistance in evacuating....

This directly contradicts assertions made by some, such as Rick Casey, that:

[T]he evacuation plan was based on private autos. There was no mechanism to evacuate those without cars, much less those in nursing homes and hospitals.

Have they no cars? Let them rent limos.

While I do not think the government should run evacuations, it is telling that Bush's many detractors aren't letting facts stand in the way of the chance to lambaste the President.

More on this is here.

Note 2: Via Power Line is a mostly good article about the looters that Jesse Jackson, Jr., says we're too focused on.

On a normal day, those who make up New Orleans' dangerous criminal class -- yes, likely the same African-Americans we see looting now -- terrorize their own communities. Once in a while, a spectacular crime makes headlines -- the shooting death of a tourist just outside the French Quarter, or the rape and murder of a Tulane student. But day in and day out, New Orleans' black criminal class victimizes other blacks. Churches put up billboards in the worst neighborhoods that plead: "Thou shalt not kill." The inner-city buses shuttle what look like hundreds of war veterans around the city -- young black men, many of them innocent victims, paralyzed in wheelchairs.

This week, this entrenched criminal class has freely roamed the streets -- and terrorized everyone. On Monday, New Orleans still had food and water stocked in stores across the city, but young looters began sacking stores, trashing the needed food and stealing TVs, DVDs, and other equipment. If the uncoordinated, understaffed New Orleans police had even a prayer of keeping order, it was Monday. By Tuesday, the looters had armed themselves with ample weapons supplies available in stores all across the city; by Wednesday, the armed gangs, out of food and water like everyone else, were not only viciously dangerous but desperate, hungry, and thirsty.

But while the looters have reportedly killed police offers and have shot at rescue workers, they're mainly victimizing, as usual, other poor blacks. The vicious looters aren’t the face of New Orleans' poor blacks. Their victims are: the thousands of New Orleanians who made their way to shelter before the storm, and who rescued others and brought them to shelter during and after the storm -- but who now cannot get the help they desperately need.

Might it be that if we let the looters roam, young Jesse Jackson will have a higher body count to blame on Bush? Or is he this clueless? Some civil rights leader!

Note 3: Another notable example of race-baiting: Drudge reports that, at an NBC fundraiser, Kanye West said, "Bush doesn't care about black people." See also the Noonze Wire for more on this moron.

Updates

Today: Added PS.
9-5-05:(1) Note changed to Note 3. PS changed to Note 2. Added Note 1 and link to Kayne West post. (2) Corrected spelling of Kanye West's name. (3) Added link in Note 1 to more detail on how the local authorities botched the evacuations.